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  &#8220;Lack of sleep disrupts every physiologic function in the body,&#8221; said Eve Van Cauter of the University of Chicago. &#8220;We have nothing in our biology that allows us to adapt to this behavior.&#8221;
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  The amount of necessary sleep varies from person to person, with some breezing through their days on just a few hours&#8217; slumber and others barely functioning without a full 10 hours, experts say. But most people apparently need between about seven and nine hours, with studies indicating that an increased risk for disease starts to kick in when people get less than six or seven, experts say.
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  So why do mammals and birds have REM sleep at all? &#8220;The best answer I can come up with is that it&#8217;s there to prepare you for waking,&#8221; Dr. Siegel said. &#8220;When the important work of sleep is done, REM sleep just makes you as alert as you can be while you&#8217;re asleep.&#8221;
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  They found that meditating actually increases the thickness of the cortex in areas involved in attention and sensory processing, such as the prefrontal cortex and the right anterior insula.
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  “You are exercising it while you meditate, and it gets bigger,” she says. The finding is in line with studies showing that accomplished musicians, athletes and linguists all have thickening in relevant areas of the cortex. It is further evidence, says Lazar, that yogis “aren’t just sitting there doing nothing&#8221;.
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  The growth of the cortex is not due to the growth of new neurons, she points out, but results from wider blood vessels, more supporting structures such as glia and astrocytes, and increased branching and connections.
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I have gotten over the fact that i screwed up my oral and am back to my old self, bubbling with over-confidence ;). Anyhoo, this has been a very very bad week and have been doing lots of work on my research, assignments, grading and reading for tests.  

Seems like Nature has a way to test each individual at the worst possible times ! How challenging, isn’t it ?! I have kept up till now, sacrificing a lot of my sleep this week but am not sure if i can hold on for another 2 days with an average of 3 hrs sleep. Lets hope i do make it.

Btw, i’ve got a beautiful and informative article that i am writing myself, based on various references about the goodness of sleep. Yes. You heard me right. Sleep. So grab your pillows and place your laptop by the bedside to read all about the importance of getting sleep and how it can adversely affect you and your health, if you dont taste enough of it !

Watch out for the article over the weekend. Until then, checking out.

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Nearly 20,000 dead in South Asian quake. This is very sad. On a beautiful sunday morning, this is not the kind of news i wanted to see.Eventhough i do not exactly like Pakistan or maybe just their Indian team and politicians, a toll of 20,000 innocent people is a terrible and disturbing news. And what’s more petrifying is that South Asia is Prone to more Earthquakes in the future. Here are some excerpts from this article about some of the damage that earthquakes have caused in the past.

The area along India’s northern border in disputed Kashmir is by far the hottest spot in that country, said A.K. Shukla, director of India’s Earthquake Risk Evaluation Center. He said the latest quake, unfortunately, will not be the last and may not be the largest to come.”It’s not a question of surprise, because that area is a highly seismic one,” he said. “It’s not surprising at all.”

Saturday’s quake was centered about 60 miles northeast of Islamabad in the forested mountains of Pakistani Kashmir. At least 22 aftershocks followed within 24 hours, including a 6.2-magnitude temblor.

In 1935, a magnitude-7.5 earthquake was recorded in Quetta, India, killing 50,000. In 1974, just north of the recent quake’s epicenter, a magnitude-6.2 earthquake occurred, generating 5,800 casualties.

Will the same type of collision that created the Himalayas millions of years ago be the demise of beautiful Asia and my beautiful sub-continent ? I pray for that not to happen.

Update : Death Toll at 35,000 in Pakistan Quake

Just got the hot news. I have cleared all three papers in my qualification exam ! I rock ! I am high with excitement now. If the world is going to collapse onto itself, please let it be now.

Good things aside, i still have a oral qualifier round to look forward to. I was told that i was a bit weak with Reactor Physics and so have 2 major Gods in nuclear department specializing in Xr physics on my committee for the oral.

Now this is going to be fun. Before even the thought of starting preparation for the oral, i am going out to party ! Woohoo …

<p>
  After him are people who are interested in his stock market analyses for monetary purposes, and more strangely, a group of Rabbis who are convinced the same pattern of numbers is the key to their salvation. However, Max is the only one who can understand the semantics of the 216 digit number that is key to the universal lock, a plot device that I thought was truly brilliant. In the end, Max succeeds on his quest, but what he understands is never revealed to us. What he sees however is catalyst enough for him to inflict a lobotomy upon himself.
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  Today, many scientists (including myself) are on the same quest that Max is, and most don&#8217;t need to be as obsessed to find what they&#8217;re looking for. As demonstrated several times over the course of humanity&#8217;s existence, there is indeed an explanation for a lot of things we see in nature. That is, at least a conceptual level, there do exist patterns that can be written out as mathematical equations. This is particularly true given the discoveries this centuries involving relativity, quantum mechanics, and the subsequent biological and computing revolutions. But the search for the Grand Unified Theory continues.
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<p>
  Even though the movie isn&#8217;t directly about Archimedes&#8217; constant, Pi is indeed an excellent solution to Max&#8217;s problem. That constant is ubiquitous in our world today, popping up every so often, in a seemingly independent manner. Besides its strong presence in geometry, Pi appears in various equations throughout mathematics (especially certain infinite series) and even in places where you wouldn&#8217;t necessarily expect it to at first intuition. For example, the Buffon needle problem: what is the probability that a needle of length 1, thrown at random on a plane divided by parallel lines 1 unit apart, will land in such a manner that it crosses a line (2/Pi)? What is the probability that two integers chosen at random have a common factor exceeding one (6/Pi^2)?
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<p>
  Unlike many independent films, Pi actually has a fairly coherent, albeit obscure, plot. The cinematography is excellent as well. Filmed completely in black and white, with obscure and surreal settings, the movie tries very hard to brings the audience to the edge of the abyss that is Max&#8217;s mind. The acting by Sean Gullette is highly convincing. The electronic music (courtesy of Clint Mansell of Pop Will Eat Itself) is top-notch. The movie is definitely worth the approximately Pi * e dollars I paid for it and I highly recommend checking it out at a local independent theatre near you.
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No these ain’t my girlfriends ! Well i wish but i am talking about the hurricanes which have rocked the coasts of US in the past few weeks. In another 72 hours, i am about to see a real hurricane passing through College Station, a hurricane which could totally engulf the whole state of Florida in its size. Hurricane Rita has been issued as a Category Five hurricane. It probably might become Category Two by the time it reaches here, but right now, she’s devastatingly beautiful and intense.

Watch this picture, of the eye of the Hurricane Rita.

Let me quote some specifics about a Category Five hurricane. Here you go.

Winds greater than 155 mph (greater than 135 kt or 249 km/hr). Barometric Pressure Below 920 mb (Below 27.17 in) Storm surge generally greater than 18 ft above normal. Complete roof failure on many residences and industrial buildings. Some complete building failures with small utility buildings blown over or away. All shrubs, trees, and signs blown down. Complete destruction of mobile homes. Severe and extensive window and door damage. Low-lying escape routes are cut by rising water 3-5 hours before arrival of the center of the hurricane. Major damage to lower floors of all structures located less than 15 ft above sea level and within 500 yards of the shoreline. Massive evacuation of residential areas on low ground within 5-10 miles (8-16 km) of the shoreline may be required.

And that my friend, is intensity. That is nature’s sheer sneeze. Nature’s way of reacting to the cruelty being done to her by burning more and more fossil fuels, destroying the natural cycles, industrialization, population explosion, forest invasion, disrupting eco-balance and more things which we unknowingly affect her in different ways.

I wish we could realize the effects and reduce the usage of such methods. It probably is a futile effort to pursue anything right now at this stage because the earth would not even begin to react the change for another 50 years or so. But better late than never. Right !

Anyway, out of the context, the insane mind in me wishes that i could see such a hurricane in action at its full intensity. I might chicken out if i do see it but hey, how will i know that until i witness it ?!

You can track the advance of Hurricane Rita here. Also there is a nice animation showing the path of the hurricane.

One nice short story after a long time. You’ve gotta read this.

Here’s a excerpt from the story.

You ever wonder why Google doesn’t cache it’s own searches?

They program around it.

No. That’s what you think. That’s what everyone thinks. But it started back when Google was just a thesis project, back when it was just a drop in the data sea. No one thought to stop it back then. That web site you had, the one you forgot about. Almost everyone’s got one of those, right? But Google doesn’t forget. Google’s studied that thing so many times that it’s studied its own caches of you. What do you figure happens, when a site gets so big that it’s bigger than the internet?

It’s still a part of the internet, though.

No. Now, the internet is a part of Google.

Cool !

Pictures are worth a thousand words. No point saying anything more on this other than Coool …